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Small Companies, Big Ideas: Supporting Social Change Through Entrepreneurship

As mobile and wireless technologies continue to improve and
make communication faster, simpler, and more direct, they are increasingly being
leveraged to create solutions that can make an impact in unexpected ways. Given
their position at the forefront of the industry, telecom providers have the
unique opportunity to innovate—not only through their own products and services,
but also through their nonprofit arm and their foundations, to support
entrepreneurs who are innovating for social good.

At Vodafone Americas Foundation, part of Vodafone’s network
of 27 foundations worldwide, goals center on connecting for good. The company aims to
connect an ecosystem of partners that use wireless technology to spark
innovation and foster entrepreneurship to encourage new approaches that impact
social change.

One of the best ways for companies and nonprofits alike,
whether they are small or large, to encourage innovation is through competition
programs. The competition model is mirrored across the industry as many
companies—both commercial and philanthropic—now use similar models to
target their search for unique, effective, and innovative solutions that are
not only highly socially impactful, but sustainable as well.

The Vodafone Americas Foundation supports entrepreneurs
using this model through the Wireless Innovation
Project, (WIP) an annual competition designed to promote innovation and
increase the implementation of wireless-related technology for a better world. The
competition recently opened its ninth annual call for submissions. In March of next
year, they will select three winning projects and award them up to $600,000, with
first place receiving $300,000, second place $200,000 and third place $100,000.

Over the past decade, they’ve had the opportunity to work with
some incredible entrepreneurs through this program. Earlier this year, WIP
awarded the first-place prize to Neopenda, a global health tech startup that
aims to create healthcare solutions to help newborns in low-resource settings.
Neopenda built an affordable, wearable newborn vital signs monitor that
transmits data to nurses to help provide early detection when a newborn is in
distress.

MobileODT, the first prize winner in 2014, created a
low-cost digital camera attachment for smartphones, which is a potential
game-changer in reducing cervical cancer. Since winning the competition,
MobileODT’s technology has been met with enthusiastic response from the medical
community in 21 countries. The company is now expanding into new locations
around the world, including Afghanistan, which currently has no cervical cancer
screening program in place.

While health solutions are common to the WIP competition,
there are applicants from a variety of fields like disaster relief, fintech, artisan
market place and environmental solutions like clean air and water.One of the most notable winners that has gone
on to do bigger and better things is a fintech solution called Insight by
Inventure, now known as Tala. They started out as a financial literacy program
and a management tool for the poor, and now they do much more, such as
providing microloans, credit and access to banking—creating opportunities for
investment in one’s business, education or home, changing the whole micro-economy
of villages and towns.

While Neopenda, MobileODT, Tala, and other WIP winners
started as small startups with big ideas, they are already making an impact.
Many WIP winners have proven their ventures are scalable—more than 90 percent
of previous WIP winners have gone on to receive additional funding from other
organizations, reaching over $9.5 million in total funding.

If you are a social entrepreneur, or part of a non-profit,
university, or NGO—no matter how small—that is working on a project that
leverages mobile or wireless technology, you are encouraged to share your ideas and
apply to the competition. The power of innovation is driven by the size of the
idea, not the reach of a company.